forget glamour. we want grit!

We would deep-dive into the storytelling and choosing the right writer and photographer and creating something unexpected and beautiful and wondrous. And then, often as the meeting drew to a close, we'd have a good giggle about the shitholes that we all secretly really love. Places that would make anyone visiting for the first time question your sanity, your taste, your opinions. Places that are at first glance scrappy, unlovely, tourist-clogged. And then, if you give them a chance, they unfurl into a nugget of loveliness, the joy just takes that little bit more effort to seek out. 

Bali is that place for sure, Goa too, most of Thailand, all of Florida, New York (the older I get, the more I notice how grubby it is), those resorts in the Alps like Tignes, Flaine, La Plagne, where the skiing is bananas good and the architecture so ugly it’s come back round into fashion. And Ibiza. 

I really do love Ibiza. I remember going for the first time aged 16. I flew to Madrid and then connected on a tiny Iberia plane where people at the back were smoking, tapping their ash into those tiny, tinny ashtrays in the armrests. Even the journey seemed impossibly glamorous. I was with my godfather and his wife who had rented a house in the north of the island next door to Jade Jagger's. I spent a week, with an equally wide-eyed school friend, trotting behind the grown-ups from party to party, each one trippier than the last. We slept on the beach listening to DJ Jonathan at Sa Trinxa, we watched the sun set behind Es Vedra. 

We would stick our heads out of the car roof and sing sweet songs as we drove into the sunshine. 

It was the late nineties but with a 1970s haze. I came back almost every year after that. Often twice. The rite of passage after school meant staying in San Antonio (what a place) and trying to keep out of trouble. Later trips on a shoestring took me to the east coast, Santa Eulalia and Es Cana, where a little gang of us shot to in a flash having found a holiday for £112 for seven nights including flights and accommodation and some rubbery fried eggs for breakfast each day. 

Then I upgraded to villas down south behind the wonderful Es Cavallet, back when El Chiringuito actually was a chiringuito. Things changed each time we returned. The billboards lining the road from the airport multiplied like mushrooms in the heat haze, the road itself spread its wings and suddenly two lanes became four, the barefoot car rental shack at the airport where the keys would be left behind the sun visor or on top of the dusty wheel became a stressful operation of paperwork and clipboards. Reservations were needed suddenly for lunches at Es Torrent and dinners at La Paloma. We used to be able to wink and charm our way onto the VIP terrace at Space or the upper levels of Privilege for Manumission. 

Alas no more. I still love it though. Because the experience is not about it being shiny and perfect. It’s of course the lack of polish that makes everyone love it that bit more. I still tell people to go. Go to Ibiza, go to all the shitholes, for they are magic in their own way. But just don’t judge me for the first 10 minutes.